The future of America's security policy in the region pivots on one little beach

SITTING bare-footed and cross-legged under a makeshift awning, Teruo Onishi, a retired schoolteacher and peace activist, looks across from the beach at Henoko to an islet with a shrine to welcome the sea gods that look after this part of the world, and a coral reef beyond. He delivers a history lesson. Though the arrival at Japan's shores in 1854 of Commodore Matthew Perry's “black ships” may, with good reason, be better known to Japan and the world, says Mr Onishi, it is the earlier, friendly visit to Okinawa of a British naval captain, Basil Hall, in 1816 that is remembered by locals.

Okinawans took to Hall, allowing him to land and even to bury one of his crew—the grave may still be seen. On his voyage back to England, Hall called on Napoleon on St Helena. He spoke warmly and at length of the Ryukyu archipelago (then known as Loo-Choo, which now makes up Japan's Okinawa prefecture). When, Hall wrote later, he recounted how the Okinawans had no “wars or weapons of destruction”, Napoleon was amazed.

Today, few spots in the world are as heavy with weapons of destruction as Okinawa, and they are American: this southernmost of Japan's prefectures is home to half the 50,000 servicemen America maintains in the country. After a teenage girl was raped in 1995 by three of them, America agreed to close its most deeply resented facility on Okinawa—Futenma air base, its biggest overseas marine base, squeezed right up against crowded Ginowan city. But first, an alternative had to be found.

America proposed building a floating heliport 1.5 miles (2.5km) long over the coral reef at Henoko, on Okinawa's eastern side. The Japanese government turned down the site, where dugong, a rare sea-cow, graze. Instead, it proposed that the heliport be built on land near Henoko, where America's Camp Schwab now sits. This time the Americans objected. Not only would that cramp the marines' training, they said; there were also villages about, and the whole point of relocating was to escape local residents' objections to noise and danger.

Nearly a decade after the negotiations to move Futenma began, a sense of urgency has been growing. Occasional rapes, assaults and traffic accidents committed by American servicemen still arouse resentment. Last year a helicopter crashed on a university campus in Ginowan. Both America and Japan are now keen to have something to show for a planned summit between George Bush and Japan's prime minister, Junichiro Koizumi, in mid-November, when Mr Bush may also visit Okinawa.

This week the Americans' frustration erupted over the lack of progress. Richard Lawless, deputy assistant defence secretary for Asia and the Pacific, said in Tokyo that the security alliance with Japan, the foundation of America's security policy in Asia, was being undermined by “interminable dialogue over parochial issues”. That outburst seemed to do the trick. For on October 26th a deal appeared to have been reached. This would involve building a heliport with a shorter runway, partly on Camp Schwab land and partly running into the sea.

This will supposedly save the dugong's grounds and keep flights farther from residential areas. Ending the rift with Japan will also help the Americans to overhaul their security strategy in East Asia, giving them more flexibility to deal with the threats posed by terrorism, by a nuclear-armed North Korea, by the military muscle of a rising China and, with that, the potential for conflict over Taiwan. With the base row over, if America can rely upon Japan to play a greater part in its own defence, America can reduce the number of its own troops in Japan and move some forces to Guam or even Hawaii.

First, however, the deal over the relocation of the Okinawa air base has to satisfy the people of the island, and the politics is tricky. For a start, the governor, Keiichi Inamine, a proud man, has blessed the offshore heliport scheme and appears unwilling to lose face. As for the electorate, anti-military feelings are high. It is not just that Okinawa, with 0.6% of Japan's land area, has long had to bear a disproportionate brunt of the American presence. History still plays a powerful part: some of the bloodiest campaigns anywhere in the second world war were fought in Okinawa, and a third of the civilian population died. America did not return Okinawa's sovereignty to Japan until 1972, and feelings of second-class citizenship linger.

On the other hand, the bases' presence brings lashings of central government money to the country's poorest prefecture. On top of a cornucopia of grants, subsidies and tax concessions, the government pays the salaries of the 8,800 Japanese who work in the bases. Okinawans on whose land the bases are built are paid ¥80 billion ($670m, or over $100,000 a hectare) in rent a year. These landowners, of whom there are 29,000, are in no hurry to see the Americans go. With a key mayoral race in Nago, near Henoko, next January and a governor's race later in the year, regional security might yet have to wait.